Where the Clouds are Going
by SilverLocke980
Summary: A gift-fic for Sabriel41. VincentTifa. Vincent, over a hundred years after Tifa's death, stands over her grave, and as he stands there, he wonders about many things, thinks of many things... and finds out where the clouds are going. (inspired by Enya's "F


Hey people. This is just a small gift-fic I wrote for Sabriel41, but she's kindly allowed me to use it as an actual fic. Consider it a holiday gift for all you Vincent/Tifa fans. It's a song-fic, but not really; it's more inspired by the song than anything else. The song is Enya's "Flora's Secret".

Here we go!

"SHOWTIME!"

Where the Clouds are Going

-----

_Lovers in the long grass  
look above them  
only they can see  
where the clouds are going  
only to discover  
dust and sunlight  
ever make the sky so blue_

-----

Vincent looked up in the pouring rain, as the skies above let down a cascading rush of water to touch the ground. And yet, curiously, it wasn't storming here... and it never had. So far as Vincent knew, storms never touched this grave, nor the graves of any of his friends. In fact, storms didn't even hang around Vincent himself for very long, and when they did, they were never really that bad. He'd once actually seen a storm dissipiate when he'd walked into the town it was over, seeming to storm and grumble for a bit and then just suddenly breaking up, like children seeing an adult come in and grumblingly putting away their toys... or maybe soldiers, who see a general coming and willingly let him pass. Yes, maybe that was it... not children running from an adult, but soldiers, letting an older and a greater general pass. Vincent liked to think so, anyway.

-----

_Afternoon is hazy  
river flowing  
all around the sounds  
moving closer to them  
telling them the story  
told by flora  
dreams they never knew_

-----

He stopped, as he stood over her grave, and the three small flowers in his corrupted left hand, the one she'd never really ignored but never really paid attention to either, seemed to wilt in the rain, and their odd white color- combined with the rain pouring over their petals- made them seem almost like crying willows, a type of tree that grew near Rocket Town that seemed always to be crying, somehow. As Vincent looked at them, they seemed silver.... silver willows weeping tears.

He placed them on the grave and stood up.

-----

_Silver willows  
tears from Persia  
those who come  
from a far-off island  
Winter Chanterelle lies  
under cover  
Glory-of-the-sun in blue_

-----

He looked up in the skies, and there, like some sort of great eye, he saw her... he saw the times they'd stood together, the times they'd fought together, the times they'd almost died together... and throughout it all, not one glimmer of romance between them, not a single hint of the river that would wash between both of them, that would carry them so far away... He saw the small group they'd formed in North Corel, after the hellish battle between Meteor, Lifestream, and Holy... how they'd all settled down there, become a kind of screwball family in lieu of the families they had all loved and lost... Yuffie alone had not stayed with them, but she was the youngest of them and had suffered the fewest pains in her life. They willingly let her go but, like big brothers who can't quite resist the temptation to keep an eye on a little sister, they checked up on her from time to time, as she became a princess of Wutai and led her country (one of the few completely unharmed by the aftereffects of Meteor) to dominance in the world, using Cid's airship designs to create a vital infrastructure of flying planes that connected the world to itself, airships allowing oceans, forests, mountains, and the blasted waste that once was Midgar to be circumvented as easily as one might circumvent a small stream by hopping lightly over it.

He saw the decade or so that had passed before either of them ever really felt anything for the other. They had, by some odd twist of Fate (a Fate that Vincent now believed fully in; a hundred years of walking roads and hearing the world itself speak, he believed in a Fate that was not destiny but mere coincidence; the smallest things having the biggest impact in the world, something Vincent saw time and time again in the world, and in his own past, now that he thought about it), roomed right next to each other, in the small shacks that had made up North Corel, and they had always seen each other. She had been with Cloud in the beginning, of course, but Cloud was a man too full of pain to deal with much- he'd managed to hold together long enough to defeat Sephiroth, but after hearing Aeris' voice for those few seconds when the Lifestream combated Meteor, it had almost broken him. Cloud had succumbed to a horrible fever for seven months afterward, and during it he spoke constantly of her, in broken, jumbled phrases that reminded all of them of his Mako sickness in Mideel and terrified them all, even if it was only in their own hearts and minds: he kept saying something like "so... beautiful.... why did you... leave?..." and mumbling to himself about Aeris. It was sad, really; what was more sad, now that Vincent thought about it, was the way Tifa had restored him to health regardless of the fact that she, better than anyone, knew what was in his heart. Tifa had been so sweet, so caring...

-----

_Some they know as passion  
some as freedom  
some they know as love  
and the way it leaves them  
Summer snowflake  
for a season  
when the sky above is blue  
when the sky above is blue_

-----

He looked up, and in the far blue sky he saw the way Cloud had looked, as he stood off from them, almost ashamed and yet somehow defiant; the look in his eyes that said something was over, a time had passed, and that though he desperately wished it wasn't so, there was nothing he could do about it now. He saw him standing there, Zack's sword slung over his back, his eyes full of pain and the lingering scars of madness that had festered in his soul and nearly devoured his mind. He had stood far off, the dust of North Corel's desert blowing slowly past him, looking at them and saying that he couldn't go on. They had all come out to see him, all of them (even Yuffie; she'd come for a visit that week, the action that had actually prompted Cloud to go; he wanted to say goodbye to all his friends at once, and he'd been waiting for Yuffie to come back before he left), and as they stood together, one group against the world (as they always had been), Cloud had stood in front of them and told them he had to leave. He'd said that he couldn't quite deal with all of it as of yet, not the past, he'd dealt with that, but the travails of the world around them. He said that he felt as if he had to start moving again, as if he had to keep moving, that if he didn't and stopped to think for a minute he'd go mad again. He said that there were still some times when he felt as if he were Zack. He said that there were even some times when he still thought he was Sephiroth. He'd looked at them, and said he was sorry... but he had to leave, had to keep moving on, had to keep following the voice in his head that told him to walk on.

-----

_Lying in the long grass  
close beside her  
giving her the name  
of the one the moon loves  
this will be the day she  
will remember  
when she knew his heart was_

-----

It hadn't been long, after that, that Tifa had come to him, just wanting someone to talk to... someone to commiserate with. She had almost went after him, but Cloud's terrified, " Tifa! No! Please! I don't... want you... to be hurt anymore.... let go of it... let go of ME..." had stopped her from coming after him. She'd been brave, though, and had not fled, tears in her eyes, to the safety of her house... instead, she'd simply watched him leave, watched him walk on, his shoulders drooping and full of shame, his head bent and somehow shaggy in the shifting desert breeze... about a week afterwards, Tifa had come to his house, probably because it was the nearest one to her, and had sat down to talk with him... at first, it seemed like any other ordinary visit, but Vincent knew that it wasn't, and soon enough, Tifa got to the heart of the matter, asking him, " What was it like?"

He'd replied, " Hmm?"

She'd said, " To watch someone you love leave. To watch someone you love just... go away... or love someone else, even though you know that it's useless and worthless for them to love that person, because they're gone or wrong or...."

And right then, he'd known. He'd known what she was getting at. Lucrecia. Her love for Hojo, that somehow damned and mad little man who had ruined so much. He'd known that she hadn't come to his house because it was the closest. She'd come because she thought he was the only one who'd understand. They'd both had someone they love suddenly love another, someone that eventually damned them... Lucrecia was damned by Hojo's evil, Cloud by Aeris' death... and it had been there, in that room, that the sparks had first started to fly between them. But... no... sparks wasn't the correct word. There had been no fire, no moment of flame between them... it had been more like a plant, a flower, something slowly growing, nurtured by a hug or a light caress every now and then, something that told them sweet secrets as they held each other, every now and then, in the dying sunlight of their slowly healing world...

-----

_Loving in the long grass  
close beside her  
whispering of love  
and the way it leaves them  
lying in the long grass  
in the sunlight  
they believe it's true love_

-----

It had taken a long while for them to really accept it, and it never really became the kind of love that was free and swinging... but they'd both touched that love too, and neither were really prepared to go back there again. Their love was quiet, soft, the kind of love that spent a lot of time laying in long grasses and holding each other, looking up at blue skies and just holding each other, not the kind that wants it to never end because it's the kind that already knows it has to end, but somehow not bitter over that fact, not bitter at all... he not bitter because of time's effect on his wounds, she not bitter because it was not in her nature to be bitter over anything, even loss...

-----

_And from all around them  
flora's secret  
telling them of love  
and the way it breathes and_

-----

It had somehow not been so bad... had, in fact, been wonderful, to know that someone did care for him, for the blasted vampire thing he was... she was the one person who had not reacted to the withered, claw-like thing that was his left hand, who had not shaken with revulsion when he'd taken the brown, dessicated pincer from the golden gauntlet Hojo had made for it (mostly because Hojo thought it was funny to hide such horrible ugliness in a pretty golden glove), the night they'd decided to share their bed with each other... The way she had breathed, laying next to him, on their bed. The way _it_ had breathed, the way they loved each other, somehow... breathing....

-----

_looking up from eyes of  
amaranthine  
they can see the sky is lue  
knowing that their love is true  
dreams they never knew  
and the sky above is blue_

-----

He shook himself from his reverie and saw himself looking down, at the small tombstone that marked her grave. He looked up, and saw the clouds disappearing, the rain finally having washed away. He heard the bubbling of a small brook as it passed him, swollen slightly from the rain, a little river that washed on and on, heading towards the sea. Vincent looked up, and in the sky, he thought he saw something... a glimpse of brown hair, of fair eyes, and smiles of sweet, sweet rest. He thought he saw a great, winding road, a river, heading on and on, towards an ocean, a meeting place, and there, at the end of the road, all his friends waited... those who had died before him, who had to die before him, because Vincent could not age, not after what Hojo had done to him.... he saw Cloud, no longer ashamed, a better man now in death than in life, looking up towards the great blue sky he'd fought for... he saw Barret, laughing and playing with Marlene, his first family with him as well, together again now that all their lives were over, and his old friend Dyne standing by them as well... Cid and Shera, Yuffie and her father, the gentleman Shinra executive Reeve, standing by the mechanical toy he'd used to help them in their battles, Nanaki too, who would die before Vincent as well, though not too much before... even Aeris, her time of waiting over now, happy in the afterlife as she had never really been in this life. All of these things Vincent saw, and knew, and loved.

But she stood apart from them, long hair swaying softly, looking at him with that expression on her face that said she, too, knew what it was like to hurt, knew what it was like to heal... and knew what it was like to hurt again. She smiled at him, and before the vision broke, before the peaceful dream drifted away like the clouds that had fled to show him the blue sky where this vision had appeared, he heard her say something.

Vincent lived for over a thousand years, until his body finally gave up and died. But until the day he finally died, until his road had finally ended and his river met the greater ocean of life, he remembered those words, and he always thought of them when the world seemed bleak and he, the last member of AVALANCHE, felt his efforts were useless, as he often did:

" Remember... I'm where the clouds are going. I'm where you are going. Remember that. "

And remember he did.

As Vincent walked away, as the storms of his planet scattered before him (for the Planet, in remembrance of its great heroes, would allow no earthquakes, no fires, no waves, no storms to pass before them- it would never allow pain to enter their lives on its account, and their grave sites were holy, almost, protected ground for the Planet), he had a sudden, errant thought, and a rare smile lit his wan, hidden face.

" Where are the clouds going?" he thought, musingly... and as he looked up into the sky one last time, he thought he knew where they were going.

Home.

Smiling still, Vincent Valentine walked off. The flowers he'd placed on Tifa Lockheart's grave blew lightly in the breeze, and somewhere far away, someone smiled.

- Hope you like it. Happy Holidays, and Merry Christmas to you all!


End file.
